Wheeling the Gurney Over a Cliff

The recent passage of health care reform by the federal government has been a topic of great contention in every corner of this nation, and it will continue to be so as dozens of states line up in opposition to the bill on constitutional and other grounds.  However, there seems to be only a feeble attempt in all of this noisy discussion to answer the fundamental question that underlies the debate: "Is access to medical care a fundamental right?"  Reason, a tool foreign to and inconsistently applied by most of our leaders, suggests that it is not.

This case suggests a proof by contradiction.  First, we will assume that no fundamental right may infringe upon any other fundamental right.  (This is necessary for the set of fundamental rights to be intelligible and consistent.)  Let us then assume that access to medical care is a fundamental right.  Also, we acknowledge that one of the most fundamental human rights is the right to freely dispose of one's abilities and resources.  If it can be shown that the right to medical care conflicts with this right, we must conclude that either one or both of them are not, in fact, rights at all.

If every human being is entitled to medical care, then it will be necessary for some entity to provide it.  In a free society, health care is provided in a marketplace where all transactions occur with the consent of all relevant parties.  In the case where no voluntary arrangement can be reached, the only way for the transaction to occur is through coercion by some outside authority.  It is in this way that the right to medical care obliterates the right of some individual to his or her own abilities or resources.  Whether we consider the surgeon who is forced to take less than market price for his services or the taxpayer who is forced to pay for the medical care of others, the right to medical care is entirely incompatible with individual liberty.

We are then forced to chose which of our supposed rights are valid.  Unless we wish to sacrifice liberty for the promise of care from a bankrupt bureaucracy and essential freedom for secondary want, we must dismiss the notion that medical care even remotely resembles something we would call a fundamental human right.  This moral reality makes possible a principled opposition to all forms of socialized medicine.

A friend of mine recently reminded me of Thomas Jefferson's advice on the subject.  He said, "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."  Free men and women everywhere would do well to heed our third president's wisdom.